


My Brother's Keeper

by ProwlingThunder



Series: The Everlasting List of Shenanigans [158]
Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Gen, Italian Assassins, Levantian Assassins, Modern AU, Modern!Ezio, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-21
Updated: 2015-01-21
Packaged: 2018-03-08 10:46:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3206369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProwlingThunder/pseuds/ProwlingThunder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt!Fill.</p><p>Monteriggioni is not <i>unused</i> to family coming to call. But it is a little strange.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Brother's Keeper

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ZpanSven](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZpanSven/gifts).



There were three people at Monteriggioni's gates, settled lightly on motorcycles that still purred. Two gray, one white, matching gear all around. Ezio peered down at them from his place above the Gates, hidden from the heavy rain by the eves of the walls. He couldn't hear them, but he did not need to; one of his father's mercenaries was down below, answering the gate; opening the slat, asking them their business.

Ezio would go down there in a moment himself, but for now he enjoyed the vantage that he had in the air. He watched them from the lamp-hang, as they cut their engines and the one in white-- glanced up, taking in their surroundings from behind a tinted shield. In the overhang, Ezio was pretty well shadowed, save for the very faint touch of lamplight that brushed his greaves. 

Then their visitor looked down again and flipped up his visor and addressed the gate-guard, and Ezio stepped off the lamp-hang and back on to stone walls before the _other_ two had the chance to look up. 

He peeked his head over the interior wall to glance down at the mercenaries, and found one motioning him down. It was easy enough to oblige; slip over the edge above a hang, drop the rest of the way in to the wagon of wet hay. One of the mercenaries plunged his hand in and Ezio took it, letting himself be drug out. He brushed off sticking strands, picked one out of his hair.

The young captain looked at him, the door-slat closed. He was beyond nervous.

“They're looking for a traveler. Ezio, they are quite insistent.”

They had been blue, when he had looked at them in his father's _Aquila_ vision. That didn't quite mean anything, these days.

“Let me look.” The captain opened the slide for him, and Ezio considered the trio in the brief heartbeats he had. The lead in white had removed his helmet, and his headdress was quite strange; too, the two in gray had followed suite, and the one matched the first well enough. The second wore a scarf; Ezio supposed it was to help seal the gap between neck and helmet.

But the colors?

Blood on snow, blood on ash. 

One of them was unzipping his riding jacket, gray peeling back to reveal more gray, unconcerned about the rain-- or enjoying it, perhaps, Ezio did not know. The one in white looked almost amused, if he were any judge of expression.

That one was Arabic. The first in gray was European, with no discernible lineage Ezio could see. The second had his nose tucked down into his scarf, looking sullen in the wind.

He nodded, and the captain closed the slat again. “Send word to the manor. Let my uncle know there are visitors at the gate.”

“What kind of visitors?”

Ezio shrugged. “Let me go find out, hmm? Open this and let me through.”

“Ezio--”

But two others were already pulling the door for him. He slipped through the crack and stepped forward on the road, arms spread in greeting. “Gentlemen! How can I help you this evening?”

“We are looking for our brother.” The one in white was certainly a smidge amused. “He would have come here.”

“We don't get many tourists,” Ezio apologized, and the other man-- older, maybe his Uncle's age-- raised his left hand and waved off the words. He spotted a pocked finger in the riding glove, missing past the first knuckle, and thought instantly of a burn around his own, hidden by a silver ring.

“He would have come here,” White repeated. Ezio kept his smile on his face, a little apologetic, eager to help any way he could, a little disappointed. It was a look he had perfected over the years. But he _looked_ at them again.

Still blue.

“Are you certain that is true?”

Still blue.

“Nothing is true.”

Ezio wasn't sure if his smile slipped, but the man in white _still looked amused_. Ezio thought he looked a little familiar, but right now he couldn't place him. “I suppose that is true. Well, we can at least give you a place to rest tonight, get you some dry clothes.”

“Clothes like yours?”

He refused to feel the least bit self-conscious about his clothing. It was all traditional, from his collar to his boots; well, perhaps not _proper_ white, but Tuscan ember was a good dye choice for dark, dreary days. And the cape was nice and thick, keeping rain off his back. He smiled back, honest and relieved this time.

“We shall see, brother. Everything is permitted.”

He stepped back against the wood of the gate, pounded his fist on it until he heard the slat slide open.

“Open the Gates and let us in. Send word to my uncle that our world-weary brothers have come to visit.”

“I have a bad feeling about this....”

Ezio ignored him. He had a right to his misgivings, he was only a mercenary. But there were quite a large number of brothers in the roost right now. They could take three eagles if they proved to be vultures instead.

Besides. They were still blue.


End file.
